writing – Page 3 – St GEORGIA & Boo

pausing

I have paused. for a moment. Bringing my children in close. Deciding what matters and where to go from here. Nothing seems to be clear. There doesn’t seem to be anything I should be doing differently. My children are all needing me in different ways. It is hard to find the balance and stretch myself enough for them. Trying to protect them from hurts but wary that some pains are what we are here to go through. They are what will essentially move us in the end. I need my children to know that life is hard most of the time. That it needs to flow up and down, that is the balance. We can’t get caught up in an idea that everything can always be perfect or pretty. The truth is, most of the time it’s not. But we keep striving for this idealism even when we know it’s most likely unattainable. The teenage years are hard, trying to find where they fit into the world, into the family, but mostly fitting in with themselves. I think I am a better mother to babies, they make more sence to me. I struggle as a mother to teenagers. It is a time when it feels as though so much is out of control, for us all. We try so hard to connect with each other but end up missing the mark most of the time. It’s a time when, as a mother I am having to take a deep breath and step back, and trust that somehow they will find their way, and their way back.

what if..

what if..this is it, never anymore or any less than the way things are right now, can you be alright with that?

what if..It was never meant to be the ‘everything’ it was always only meant to be life, unfolding into itself.

..there is a possibility that we already are the ‘everything’ we search for. What if it was never life’s intention that we reach that place of absolute completeness in our essential being.

What if, we already are ‘that’ essential being and ‘the all’ that it encompasses and instead we find ourselves momentarily pausing from our true essence to feel and be in this life for a while. What if the only way we are to really know ourselves is by having access to the all that we are not as well.

Is it possible, that we are meant to feel the magnitude of life’s pain and devastations, joy and blessings, truths and untruths, loves and losses, beginnings and endings..What if at some time, some place we chose this plan, we decided upon this story for reasons that may not always be clear in the process as it is unfolding.

Is it possible that we simply have forgotten what we have decided?

What if, it doesn’t really matter which direction you take. Can you for a moment consider that there are really no wrongs here just different choices and paths, does this alter your perception on things a little?

What if, today, tomorrow, yesterday you are and have always been complete. That really you are just moving through life experiencing your ‘self’ in many shades much the same as every one else. Maybe if we really understood this, we wouldn’t find it necessary to be so hard on ourselves or each other. Maybe we could forgive more easily.

What if, we decide it is enough. What we have in this life, the story we are living, the people we love the ones we care for, the way we move though our days, accepting equally our wonderous gifts and our misgivings, our faithful promises and failures to keep them, honouring ourselves when things are good and even more so in harder times.

What if, acceptance is what is needed, acceptance of all that is and all that will be, is it possible that happiness and contentment can still be found here?

the invitation -Oriah

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dream for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon… I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow if you have been opened by life’s betrayal or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain mine or your own without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy mine or your own if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful to be realistic to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure yours and mine and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

-Oriah

a letter to a teacher

Dear…

I am sending you this in response to a conversation you had with a student, my daughter, a few weeks ago prior to the end of term.Firstly I wish to express that by writing this letter, by no means am I wanting this to cause any disturbance or ill feelings with in the teaching and school environment, my intention here is simply to inform you of a different perspective on a simple conversation for your further consideration.

The conversation in question proceeded with you asking my daughter if she knew what it was she wanted to do with her life after secondary school, or if she had an idea of what it is she could see herself doing with her future.

Undoubtedly, this is a relevant and important question that these young adults need to begin thinking about. It is a question of such significance that often it is asked over and over again many times though out a single life time.

My daughter, has indeed considered this question in great depths over the past few years, it is a conversation that naturally occurs quite regularly in our family around the dinner table. My daughter is insightful and clear about what it is that simply makes her happy and what it is that does not. She has an understanding about the things in life that drive her to want to know more, learn more about, take action on, become a voice for. She is passionate in life and understandings about the things that Really matter. Her strongest and most obvious caliber is her ability to create; her visual mind is of extraordinary magnitude.

When she answered this question for you, she gave you her absolute truth.She gave you a lovely list of things she ‘could see’, and I emphasize here, ‘see’ herself doing with her future. Her list I imagine would have consisted of many creative ideas and inventiveness. I understand that from an academic point of view this may not seem like a viable way to pave for ones future, that these choices that are being considered may or may not lead to what society deems a suitable or economically sustainable way of living. Your responses however, whether it be what you actually believe, or a moment of unconscious thought, to my daughter’s ideas about her life’s future were quite disheartening and surprising to say the least. You proceed to inform her that her ideas she was considering were merely just that of ‘hobbies’ and that they were not a means for ‘making a living’. I don’t wish to quote here on the exact way in which the conversation took place, however what does matter is the understanding of which my daughter walked away with from the experience.

You have in your judgments of what is considered to be a viable future and what is not, bought her to a place at a vital young age to question herself about her abilities to offer something of value and insight to the world in which we live.

Now, my question to you is this, if we are not to guide these young minds to follow their dreams, to pursue their passions and the very things that are the driving force behind what makes them who they are as individuals, and instead lead them to follow the ideas and beliefs of another on the advice that it is a better way, or the only sustainable way; are we not creating a society of individuals who need to perform rather than live and rather than acceptance of who they are, conditioning them into an idea of what they should be?

I beg you to consider this, if we are to follow the essence of who we are, and are fortunate enough to be able to offer a valuable truth of ourselves to the world and the people in which inhibit this world, are we not in essence creating a better place for ourselves and those around us to live. Where would we be with out the creative writers who offer their poetry for you to teach, where would we be without the painters who have embellished this planet with extraordinary pieces that are admired and past down through the tests of time, and the person who sat with pencil in hand and drew the outline of the satchel you carry your important papers in, and the books that are written, the gardens you stroll through, the glorious meals created from ingredients before they find themselves into the recipe books you cook from.

There are millions of ways to walk this life, my daughter is blessed enough that she falls into many, many ideas in which she will pave her way, all of which I’m certain will have a creative flare. And when I think of that prospect for her, I am unconcerned with the amount of money she will make, or even the details in how it will happen. For now, all that is important is that she believes in herself.

You hold an important and highly valued role within the school community, and have always been highly regarded in your opinion towards particular subjects with my children. It must be recognized that your view does impact the ways in which we move these young minds towards their futures. That you are in fact, in a position of great significance by educating and shaping these minds with ideas about themselves and the choices they will need to make.

Another student at the school, recently showed me a thought provoking piece by Alan Watts, titled ‘What if money was no object’ that is quite similar to that of which I have expressed here, if you are yet to see this piece, you may find it of interesting listening.

Kind Regards,

Carly Macaulay

she is..

She is the masters finishing touch. Eve is the crown of the creation, Not an after thought. She is Gods final touch, his pièce de résistance. She fills a place in this world nothing and no one else can fill. Look out across the earth and say to yourself.. The whole vast world is incomplete without me.

.. this is what it is like to be with a woman at rest, a woman comfortable in her feminine beauty. She is enjoyable to be with. She is lovely in her presence. Your heart stops holding its breath. You relax and believe once again that all will be well.

-John and Stasi Eldredge, Captivating

hitting the ground

Even though she might.. hit bottom via famine, capture, injured instinct, destructive choices and all of the rest, remember at the bottom is where the living roots of psyche are. It is there that a womans wild underpinnings are. At bottom is the best soil to sow and grow something new again. In that sence, hitting bottom, while extremely painful, is also the sowing ground.

-Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves

Instinct is a difficult one to define, for its configurations are invisible and though we sence they have been part of human nature since the begining of time; no one knows quite where they might be housed neurologically or precicly how they act upon us.

Without warning, sometimes life just calls for us to hit the ground. To do nothing except be with whatever it is that has called us there. Most of the time for women this fall is unexpected and abruptly interferes with the routines we have created and the taking care of the children. We are, all at once forced to pay attention to ourselves and see what it is that has sent us suddenly plummeting. I have always thought myself to be in-touch with this inner knowing, wisdom of my own truth, I know now, that this too can get entangled and in a way lost within our all too busy and full lives. If we allow ourselves to wander too far astray from this unique and mysterious magic within ourselves by being too compliant, too good, too accommodating, too obliging, trying to bend and shape ourselves into something that clearly doesn’t fit, we are in danger of losing touch with our deepest intuition. “Instead of living freely, she begins to live falsely.’ Our intuitive nature gives us the ability to know our own truth, to see the unseen, to feel the truth of something before it is presented to us. ‘…to strip away her intuitive nature, her natural curiosity.. (which) leads her to discover “what lies underneath” and beyond the obvious,’ is devastating to the soul of the woman. Women have a way of losing themselves so to speak, in the raising of the children, in the taking care of others, the house, their husbands, their jobs, always serving themselves last. She drinks the cold cup of tea, allows all she loves and sometimes doesn’t to walk before her, that’s just what we do, we save ourselves for later. We do this because we love and care deeply. We see the ones around us so clearly that we make way, allow them to step first in their lives. If women do this without balance, without coming from a place of their soul truth, they are in danger of finding themselves lost within a world that isn’t entirely theirs, one where the windows of life that have a way of opening as we move forward on our paths, suddenly are closed. By not being completely true with ourselves we are out of alignment with this Life force. The Life force that resides within us. As women it is vital that every spoon we feed into the mouths of our babies, we first spoon into ourselves. At times throughout our lives it becomes necessary to dispose of the old clothes, the ones ‘which have become slackened from the wearing. The clothes are like us, worn and worn until our ideas and values are slackened by the passing of time.’ in the doing for others and not paying attention to our own inner desires closely enough. This is when we hit the ground, this is where the renewal, the revivifying, takes place.. in the re-discovering of what we really hold to be true, what we really hold sacred.

For many women, this task requires that they clear a time each day for contemplation, for a space to live in that is clearly their own with paper, pens, paints,tools, conversations, time, freedoms that are for this work only. Each woman has her own preferences, her own way.

the woman within

the woman within.

the woman within

I had two watershed experiences when I was in my early twenties, experiences that went against everything I had been taught about my body up to then. While at a women’s weeklong gathering and at night at the fire near the hot springs, I saw a naked woman of about thirty-five; her breasts were emptied out by childbearing her belly strained from birthing children. I was very young and I remember feeling sorry for the assaults on her fair and thin skin.

Some one was playing.. and she began to dance, her hair, her breasts, her skin, her limbs all moving in different directions. How beautiful she was, how vital. Her grace was heartbreaking. … that night I saw it. I saw what I had been taught to ignore, the power of a womans body when it is animated from the inside.

-Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves

begin here, with your daughters and sons, mothers fight the ever-growing war against this illusion of sculpting our bodies as though we were not born perfectly into this world. Teach your daughters to love themselves from the inside out. Teach your sons that we are perfect in all our flaws, that really the flaws are an illusion in its self. That our bodies are going to grow and change as we do, that never throughout our lives will we stay the same nor should we feel we have to. It is in our child baring years that we feel this most. It is in these years that loving ourselves and the body we wear needs our greatest admiration, for how perfectly they are able to stretch and define themselves around new life, sometimes leaving us with deep blue and purple scars that remain as reminders of how we once carried another within ourselves. Let us rid ourselves of this belief that we are meant to conceptually fit some unattainable idea of ourselves, before and after we carry our children. Let us change the minds of our teenage daughters and ease them of the heavy burdens they believe their bodies to be. Let us teach our sons to look deeper, that the real beauty of a woman lies deep within her layers, that they will never find what they are looking for if they are only ever to look at her from the outside.

the interior castle

the calling

There is a secret place. A radiant sanctuary. As real as your own kitchen. More real than that. Constructed of the purest elements. Overflowing with ten thousand beautiful things. Worlds within worlds. Forests, rivers. Velvet coverlets thrown over featherbeds, fountains bubbling beneath a canopy of stars. Bountiful forests, universal libraries. A wine cellar offering an intoxication so sweet you will never be sober again. A clarity so complete you will never again forget.

This magnificent refuge is inside you. Enter. Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway. Step around the poisonous vipers that slither at our feet, attempting to throw you off your course. Be bold. Be humble. Put away the incense and forget the incarnations they taught you. Ask no permission from the authorities. Slip away. Close your eyes and follow your breath to the still place that leads to the invisible path that leads you home.

Listen. Softly, the One you love is calling. Listen. At first you will only hear traces of his voice. Love letters he drops for you in hiding places. In the sound of your baby laughing, in your boyfriend telling you a dream, in a book about loving kindness, in the sun dripping down below the horizon and a peacock’s tail of purple and orange clouds unfolding behind it, in the nameless sorrow that fills your heart when you wake in the night and remember that the world has gone to war and you are powerless to break up the fight. Let the idle chatter between friends drop down to what matters. Listen. Later his voice will come closer. A whisper you’re almost sure is meant for you fading in and out of a cacophony of thoughts, clearer in the silent space between them. Listen. His call is flute music, far away, coming closer.

Be brave a walk through this country of your own wild heart. Be gentle and know that you know nothing. Be mindful and remember that every moment can be a prayer. Melting butter, scrambling eggs, lifting fork to mouth, praising God. Typing your daughters first short story, praising God. Losing your temper and your dignity with someone you love, praising God. Balancing ecstasy with clear thinking, self-control with self-abandon. Be still. Listen. Keep walking.

What a spectacular kingdom you have entered! Befriending the guards and taming the lions at the gates. Sliding through a crack in the doorway on your prayer rug. Crossing the moat between this world and that , walking on water if you have to, because this is your rightful place. That is your Beloved reclining in the innermost chamber, waiting for you, offering wine from a bottle with your crest on the label. Explore. Rest if you have to, but don’t go to sleep. Head straight for his arms.

And when you have dismissed the serpents of vanity and greed, conquered the lizards of self-importance, and lulled the monkey mind to sleep, your steps will be lighter. When you have given up everything to make a friend a cup of tea and tend her broken heart, stood up against the violation of innocent children and their fathers and mothers, made conscious choices to live simply and honor the earth, your steps will be lighter. When you have grown still on purpose while everything around you is asking for your chaos, you will find the doors between every room of this interior castle thrown open, the path home to your true love unobstructed after all.

No one else controls access to this perfect place. Give yourself your own unconditional permission to go there. Absolve yourself of missing the mark again and again. Believe the incredible truth that the Beloved has chosen for his dwelling place the core of your own being because that is the single most beautiful place in all of creation. Waste no time. Enter the center of your soul.

-Mirabai Starr, The Interior Castle

young body. old soul.

Her feet bare more of that of ninety years,

They are more weathered than any explanation can offer

They are feet that have walked this earth many many times,

I know this to be true.

She is remembering rather than learning,

Her purpose is strong like a ferocious wind,

She is going to move through this life at tremendous speed, I’m not sure we will be able to keep up, that is alright.

She will touch people, move them, to pay attention like she has done since the day she was born, this is her gift.

She was born with old feet, and blessed with an old soul.

I have lots of things to teach you now..

I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night.

It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don’t worry. It’s all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever.

Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all.

It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity.It is perfect. We were never really born, we will never really die.

It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It’s a dream already ended.

There’s nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born.”

-Jack Kerouac

She always had that look about her,

that look of otherness,

of eyes that see things much too far,

and thoughts that wonder off to the edge of the world.

_Joann Harris

women who run with the wolves

Each woman has potential access to Rio Abajo Rio, the-river- beneath-the-river. She arrives there through deep meditation, dance, writing, painting…or any activity which requires intense altered consciousness. A woman arrives in this world-between- worlds through yearning and by seeking something she can see just out the corner of her eye. She arrives there by deeply creative acts, through intentional solitude… much of what occurs in this ineffable world remains forever mysterious to us, for it breaks physical laws and rational laws as we know them.’

I’ll tell you right now, the doors to the world of the Wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door; if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much that you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.

The Self must have freedom to move, to speak, to be angry and to create. This self is durable, resilient, and possesses high intuition. It is a self which is knowledgable in the spiritual dealings of death and birth.

…there is in many women a ‘hungry’ one inside. But rather than hungry to be a certain size, shape, or height, rather than hungry to fit the stereotype; women are hungry for basic regard from the culture surrounding them. The ‘hungry’ one inside is longing to be treated respectfully, to be accepted and in the very least, to be met without stereotyping.

-Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves

There is a fire that burns within us, no woman is excluded from this. At times it lies dormant, waiting for long drawn out periods, with great patience, for right timing to ignite it to its full force. Women know this to be true. Some are closer to it than others. For some it burns as a quiet tinder,others a ravishing burn or a ferocious flame. The closer we come to ourselves, often after long treks down broken roads and undesired outcomes, we become tired of the search and finally surrender to all that we are in our mysterious ways, we decide to return home. With surrender, comes tremendous acceptance of ourselves despite what the world is saying. We let go of everything and in doing so find everything. We discover that we are essentially all that we ever needed, and it isn’t necessary to better, or move or change ourselves, all that is ever really necessary is to unfold from the inside out. And as Clarissa Pinkola Estes says, in Women Who Run With the Wolves,’Entering the terrain of wisdom occurs at any age. We sometimes step, sometimes stumble, and other times we are pulled into the territory of the Crone when the need for a deeper, larger understanding of our most meaningful path can no longer be denied—when the gifts hidden in our challenges must be brought forth.’

draw near, women and hear..

draw near, women and hear...

draw near, women and hear..

draw near, women, and hear what I have to say. Turn your curiosity for once towards useful objects, and consider the advantages which nature gave you and society ravished away. Come and learn how you were born the companion of man and became his slave; how you grew to like the condition and think it natural; and finally how the long habituation of slavery so degraded you that you preferred its sapping but convenient vices to the more difficult virtues of freedom and repute. If the picture I shall paint leaves you in command of yourselves, if you can contemplate it without emotion, then go back to your futile pastimes; ‘there is no remedy, the vices have become the custom’

-Choderlos de Laclos, ‘On the education of Women’, 1783

As I sit around a table of daughters, passionately involved in meaningful discussion on girls and women and their place within the world of today; I can feel a fire burning deep within their souls, almost a rage not just of how little we seemed to have learnt but how generations of women themselves seem to have come to a passive acceptance of this role we are told to play and that the young adult girls of their age are too being molded by the mothers and fathers who tell them no different. These daughters I speak of set themselves apart. They do this proudly, and by no means to condemn, or to be better, or be above their peers but merely to make a difference. They have decided to walk in another direction. You will not find these daughters engrossed in social media sifting though images of girls depicting themselves sexually, in awe of how they too can look like this and have the freedom to share it with the world. No, these daughters are not admiring or being inspired to follow this new generation of girls; instead they find it all the more reason to fight, to stand up and be seen for their intelligence, humility, bravery,compassion and strength even when faced with demoralization from their sisters and male counterparts, because they dare to be different, because they dare to say this is by no means alright. They are choosing to be the voice that speaks and if necessary shouts and says; Girls what are you doing? And who are you doing it for? These daughters are reading the likes of Simone de Bouvier, and Virgina Woolf they are angered and equally saddened by despite the fact that so much time has passed, we seemed to have learnt so little. That these women too, carried this very same message and somehow it failed to be heard. They are as astounded as I, for the incomprehension that women are still seen in so many ways weaker, inferior, less intelligent and less capable, too emotional and most appallingly as objects to be moulded and designed purely for our male companions. It is like the world is being deliberately obtuse. I recently came across a piece of writing that was screaming for the attention of women.. for women to wake up and pay attention.

‘… Why, ladies? Why must we continue to whittle ourselves down? Who is it for? What is it for? You can walk through a certain aisle at the pharmacy or at the grocery store and see the language of diminishment all over the packaging for weight loss aids of all kinds.”Shrink your waist.” “Lose inches off your thighs.””Slim down.””Get skinny”

How about”Grow your mind.” “Increase your confidence and productivity.” “Beef up your knowledge.” “Enlarge your scope of asskicking.”

That’s a valid message for women and girls: Grow, expand, branch out, open up,get bigger,wider, faster, stronger, better, smarter. Go up not down. Get strong, not skinny.

You are not here to get smaller. You are not here to have a thin waist and thighs. You are not here to disappear. You’re here to change the world! Change the world then! Forget about “losing a few pounds”. Think about what you could be gaining instead.”

-words from clearthatmindofcant